“In the distance was a big wooded area close to a lake, and just over the trees ... Read more.]]> My old voodoo mentor Earl Marlowe, featured in my Voodoo Spellbook, spent quite a number of years in the Southern States of America. One time in Mississippi, around about dusk, he was walking down a dust track when he saw something odd.

“In the distance was a big wooded area close to a lake, and just over the trees I saw a flying horse,” he told me. “At first I thought the sun or the whiskey had got to me. But I blinked my eyes and I could still see it flying just above the treetops.”

Earl wasn’t alone. Over the years there have been a number of reports of flying horses being seen. Usually the horses are brown with wings. Mostly, these “air-mares” precede strong winds and storms. And according to reports from the Old South dating back to the 1920s and before, these remarkable horses live mostly in cliffs, like eagles, along the watercourses.

Earl said: “If a regular horse is dying and it hears the neighing of a flying horse before its end comes, the regular horse will arise and be cured immediately. That’s what the old southern goofer doctors told me after I seen my first flying horse.”

Born in Southern England, she was initiated into witchcraft by Gerald Gardner (1884-1964) and went on to become a ... Read more.]]> Doreen Valiente (1922-1999) was a famous witch and was one of the most influential people in the formation of the neo-pagan religion of Wicca. It is said that she transfered her magical powers psychically to her successor on her deathbed.

Born in Southern England, she was initiated into witchcraft by Gerald Gardner (1884-1964) and went on to become a high priestess in Gardnerian Wicca. Often referred to as the “mother of modern witchcraft,” she wrote various texts for Wicca, such as The Witches Rune and the Charge of the Goddess. These went into the early Gardnerian Book of Shadows.

A friend of mine, Jon Tapsell – film-maker and author of Porn Again Christian – was commissioned to archive Valiente’s writings and materials, which forms the world’s largest collection of Wiccan memorabilia and artifacts. During this time he came across the story that Valiente may have transferred her powers psychically on her deathbed.

This is what Jon told me:

During my archiving of the Doreen Valiente (1922-1999) collection, which is the world’s largest collection of Wiccan memorabilia and artifacts, I came across an interesting story that was related to me by the owner of the collection. He claimed that he had not only been bequeathed the Wiccan relics, but had also received an energy from Doreen Valiente as well.

The energy passed by the famous witch was actually transmitted consciously over two or three sessions. But on the final occasion, when the two were in a trance at Doreen’s deathbed (she would have been hovering between life and death), the full power was passed across.

The owner of the collection claimed to retain memories, powers and perceptions that were not his as a result of this strange incident.

Such tales, of course, are familiar in the East – the passing of divine energy (baraka) from the Sufi Sheikh to his adherents is one example, but it was the first time I had heard of it in the West. The Sufis believe that once the teacher has died, his baraka can no longer be passed down to his students – so the baraka must be transmitted in life.

Perhaps this strange phenomenon may one day be explained by science as bio energies given off at a cellular level.

When actor Robert Goodman moved into 13 East Park Parade in Northampton it was as if he’d walked into a real life horror movie. This is his story…

I was enjoying a ... Read more.]]> Told to Doktor Snake by Robert Goodman, movie actor, from London. (Seen in “Gangs of New York”, “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” and “Joan of Arc”).

When actor Robert Goodman moved into 13 East Park Parade in Northampton it was as if he’d walked into a real life horror movie. This is his story…

I was enjoying a glass of wine one summer evening while learning my lines for the next day’s filming on The Bill, when suddenly there was an almighty crash from the cellar. “My God!” I exclaimed, leaping up from my chair and spilling my wine in the process. “I bet it’s Charlie the ghost again!” Even though bangs and weird dragging noises had become a regular occurrence, I still made my way down the darkly lit stairs to the cellar to investigate. My heart missed a beat as I slowly reached out to open the door and switch on the light. “Would some terrifying, unearthly creature with blazing, baleful eyes be waiting for me?”

Not this time. Under the stark light of the unshaded 60 watt bulb, all I could see was a couple of old standard lamps, toolboxes, teachests, and suitcases stuffed with junk. Nothing had been moved since the last time I’d been down. The cellar was totally quiet – eerily so.

So what could have made the bang? All I know is there was something else – an entity – living in the house with me and the other tenants at 13 East Park Parade, Northampton. The odd thing was I was never frightened of it. But I was no stranger to the paranormal. I’d been into ghosts and ghouls and strange phenomena ever since I was a boy, and so such things held little fear for me. But I also felt the entity was more mischievous than malevolent. Saying that, everyone else I knew was terrified of it. The entity, which I nicknamed “Charlie”, lost me a few girlfriends too and put a stop to relationships that could have been.

I moved into the house in 1985. I’ve always been attracted to places with history and character. And this place – an old Victorian town house about half-a-mile from Northampton town centre – fitted the bill perfectly. It was the first place I viewed and I knew I wanted it. It was run down and ramshackle and had huge rooms and very high ceilings. There was no central heating. All the rooms – even the bathroom – had open fires. I adored it!

Soon after moving in, though, things started to happen. Stuff would disappear. I’d be relaxing with a good book, for example, then I’d put it on the table while I went to the kitchen make a cup of tea. When I got back the book would have gone. Vanished without trace. The weird and annoying part of it was it would never turn up again. It would be gone for good. This happened all the time. And not just with books. Pens, TV remote controls, even cups of tea, would also disappear into thin air. It was like I’d got my very own Bermuda Triangle in the house! But it was only ever small items that disappeared. Never items of furniture or anything like that. And thankfully Charlie never nicked a script that I was working on or learning.

I like to think that somewhere in the flat, possibly hidden behind the wainscoting, is a stash of ghostly goodies. Not just from me, but presumably from everyone who ever lived in the place over the years.

The house was built in 1889 and was a hotel in the early 1900s – in the right light you can just about make out the faded sign above the door saying “The Leaside Hotel”. This was when the park opposite was a racecourse, which was often visited by King Edward VII. By strange coincidence I met an old guy, a spiritual healer, who had lived in the house as a child back in the 1930s. He told me that his parents had been mediums who regularly held séances in the then back room of the house, which was my bedroom. Once, when he was eight or nine, he went into this room and found it full of people – apparently enjoying a party or celebration. He ran out of the room and said to his mother, “Who are all those people in the house?” She told him they were spirits and that he shouldn’t be frightened as they were friends. He saw them again many times. But said he came to accept them like they were part of the furnishings.

Over the twelve years I lived in the house, few people were as relaxed as that about the place. One guy moved into the upstairs flat and moved out two weeks later. I don’t know why, but I can guess. I sometimes heard footsteps coming from the flat above, when I knew for certain it was empty. Subsequent tenants in the flat above seemed to leave pretty quickly too. But one chap, who stayed a bit longer, told me he’d heard noises and had had things disappear inexplicably on him, just like happened to me.

As I said, Charlie the ghost had a disastrous effect on my love life. My girlfriend at the time – who I’ll call “Jane” as she holds a high profile position now – never liked staying at the house. The bangs and crashes in the cellar used to freak her out. But the worst incident was when she was sitting in an armchair in the lounge watching TV. I’d gone out to the back room to root out some film scripts I’d stored away. The next thing I know she’s screaming, “Something touched me! Something touched me!” I ran through to the lounge and calmed her down. It turned out that she’d felt hands running through her hair. Presuming it was me, she turned around … but I wasn’t there. Nor was anyone else. After that, Jane refused to stay at the house.

Not long after this, another curious incident occurred. I’d just got back from doing some filming on A Fish Called Wanda, when a neighbour from upstairs came down to tell me he’d heard that a Satanic cult had been operating in the basement during the 1960s. He thought it was significant. But I took it with a pinch of salt – an urban legend he’d picked up from the pub. But my interest was piqued. So I decided to go and take a closer look at the basement. I rooted around a bit, but couldn’t find anything. Then I scraped some of the paint off one of the walls and found feint, but nevertheless, visible Satanic signs and symbols.

The other weird thing about the house was it was always cold. Even in the height of summer, I often had to light a big roaring fire to be warm enough to work on my scripts or learn lines. On one occasion a West Indian friend of mine called Lester was round helping me learn my lines for a part I had Doctor Who. At one point, despite the blazing fire in the grate, his teeth started to chatter and he shivered violently. Then it passed and the room warmed up. It was no wonder Lester used to say, “This bad place, man…” On another occasion I offered to look after a friend’s cat. But within five minutes of being at the house the plummeted and “Little Jake” was freaking out so badly I literally had to carry her back in my arms to my friend’s house and look after her there.

Just before I left the house for a flat in London in 1997 I discovered a bricked up, secret room in the cellar. I decided to investigate and carefully prized out a brick. With a torch wedged in the gap, I peered inside. The room was totally empty except for a large mound of earth in the corner. I couldn’t take out any more bricks as it was a supporting wall. So I never found out what was under the mound. But I couldn’t help but wonder if it concealed the skeleton of the unseen tenant who used to stomp around the upstairs rooms when no one was in. Maybe it was also responsible for all the crashing and banging in the cellar – and for running its bony fingers through my girlfriend Jane’s hair?

I believe that buildings can retain the energies that once were there. I believe that these energies can re-play themselves a bit like a video recording in the form that they originally appeared.

Whatever the case, being at 13 East Park Parade wasn’t all bad news. Many positive things came out of it. The experience of living alongside a resident ghost has been very helpful in my acting career. I was in the 2005 movie Spirit Trap with Billie Piper, for example, which is about a haunted house. So I was able to bring my personal experience to the part. Let’s face it, over a decade’s worth of ghostly encounters is not exactly on every actor’s CV!

Read more about Robert Goodman at: www.RobertGoodman.co.uk

First published March 10, 1999.

In 1984, Ken Webster was living with his girlfriend, Debbie, in Meadow Cottage, a small terraced house in the village of Dodleston, near Chester, in Northern ... Read more.]]> During the 1980s, Ken Webster experienced poltergeist phenomena, culminating in a strange, archaic-sounding message on his computer – with no obvious explanation as to how it got there…

First published March 10, 1999.

In 1984, Ken Webster was living with his girlfriend, Debbie, in Meadow Cottage, a small terraced house in the village of Dodleston, near Chester, in Northern England. Sharing the house with them for a short period was Nicola, a college friend of Ken’s. Little did they know that the house was about to be the focus of some very strange and perplexing phenomena.

It all started during the autumn of 1984, when a series of poltergeist events took place, which were focused on the kitchen area of Meadow Cottage. The first incident was discovered by Nicola. She noticed some marks high up on the wall between the bathroom and kitchen, which looked like footprints.

“Has somebody been putting their feet on here?” She asked.

Ken went over to look: “They do look a bit ‘footprinty’, don’t they,” he replied.

Once they had established that none of their feet fitted the prints (which were size five), they laughed about it, assuming they must have been done by a previous occupant. As the house was being renovated, the footprints were eventually painted over. But the morning after this had been done, Ken discovered another set of footprints, which were in a slightly different position to the first ones (and so, clearly, were not the first ones come through again). The footprints were painted out once more and did not reappear. But it was enough to spook Ken, Debbie and Nicola, and they avoided going downstairs in the night.

Only days later, other difficult-to-explain incidents started to occur. In one instance, a dozen tins of cat food, left in a haphazard pile to be put away later, were found stacked in the shape of a pyramid. On another occasion, two bottles of lemonade, a pack of dry cat food, and a kitchen roll were found stacked precariously in a single column. Slowly a sense of unease permeated the cottage and its inhabitants. The outside doors were more rigorously checked at night, the windows shut. The general feeling was that someone was playing a joke on them – and not a particularly pleasant joke.

Sinister poem

Shortly after this, Ken took home a computer, which he had borrowed from the school where he taught. One evening, they went out, having accidentally left the computer switched on in the kitchen, where it was kept. When they returned, they found a file on the computer, which they knew had not been there when they left the house earlier. When the file was opened, they found it contained a poem, written with capital letters inserted at random.

“Ken Deb nIc,” it began. “True Are The NIGHTmares OF a pErson that FEArs Safe Are the BODIES Of tHe Silent World.”

It continued in a similarly cryptic and slightly threatening vein. A shiver of horror went down Ken’s spine as he read it. Where had the message come from? As he stated later: this was 1984, the computer was a primitive BBC “B” model; there was no networking, no modems and definitely no Internet. In the end, the poem was put down to some kind of a prank, played by one of their friends.

Communication from the past

After the computer had been returned to school, the poltergeist events continued to occur. Every few days objects were found stacked, and on one occasion, chalk marks were seen on a brick corner support in the kitchen. The next time Ken borrowed a computer was in early February 1985. Again Ken, Debbie and Nicola went out without switching the computer off. On their return, they found another message on the computer. This time the language had an archaic flavour, seemingly 16th century Elizabethan English, and referred to Ken and Debbie and the circumstances of their life at Meadow Cottage. Part of the message read:

“…SOMETYMES METHINKS ALTERACIONS ARE SOMEWOT BARFUL, FOR THEY BREAKE MANYE A SLEPES IN MYNE BED. THOU ART GOODLY MAN WHO HATH FANCIFUL WOMAN WHO DWEL IN MYNE HOME…” (Sometimes it seems changes [house renovations] are somewhat obstructive, for many a time they disturb me sleeping in my bed. You are a worthy man who has a fanciful woman and you live in my house).

The communication was linguistically correct for the time period – as Peter Trinder, Ken Webster’s school colleague, pointed out. But the overall tone was vaguely threatening and they felt the “joke” was now in bad taste.

Not long after this, they set about trying to prove once and for all whether a hoax was involved. This entailed borrowing yet another computer and checking the disk for preloaded material. Then, once they had ensured the house was secure, they went out, leaving the computer switched on in the kitchen, as before. On their return, another message had appeared in the same quirky archaic style. After all the precautions they had taken, a hoax now seemed unlikely. On the assumption that the messages could be genuine – and on the suggestion of a friend – Ken Webster decided to reply to the communications…

Tomas Harden

Ken’s reply was met with a further response and two-way communications began in earnest. It was later discovered that the name of the communicator was Tomas Harden (during most of the contact, however, he wrote under the pseudonym Lukas Wainman). Via the computer Tomas explained that he was a farmer living in the 16th century and that he resided in a farmhouse situated on the very same spot where Ken Webster’s terrace house now stood. Tomas was an educated man having, he said, studied at Brasenose college, Oxford. He was also very taken with the books of the humanist scholar Erasmus (1466-1536) and claimed to have got to know him slightly.

As far as the communications went, it seemed that Tomas somehow “thought” his messages on to the BBC “B” computer, which apparently he could see. Besides communicating through the computer, Tomas also left his name on the wall and wrote messages on paper. Curiously, he also stated that he could, on occasion, see Ken and Debbie in his home. It was as if the two times – the mid-1980s and the mid-1540s – were overlapping in some way on the same piece of land. It was certainly Ken’s impression that the messages were not spiritualistic communications from a dead man, but were messages across time.

While Ken and Debbie communicated across time, Peter Trinder set about analysing the language used by Tomas. Using the Oxford English Dictionary to date the forms of the words, he found that the majority of Tomas’s communications were authentic to the point that they were not only evocative of the Elizabethan period, but could well have been actually from that time.

2109 AD

Besides messages from past, Ken Webster received a series of mysterious communications, purporting to be from 2109. These messages were usually cryptic and often threatening in tone. The communicators claimed that they were doing an experiment with time, and that they had opened up a “Vertical Plane” down the ages, which in its wake had enabled contact to occur between Ken and Tomas. But the communicators from 2109 were always vague about the exact nature of their experiment; they boasted of their superior scientific knowledge, but never answered questions directly.

As there was no obvious sign of a hoax, Ken Webster decided to invite the “Society for Psychical Research” to investigate. Not long after involving themselves in the case, the SPR investigators made it clear that their main interest lay in communicating directly with the communicators from 2109. To this end, they put a series of ten questions to them, which were left on the computer. Neither Ken nor Debbie saw these questions. A reply came, but the questions themselves were not answered. However, each question was referred to in the order which it had been set. This, at least, ruled out Ken and Debbie as perpetrators of a deception, as neither saw the questions and so couldn’t have made specific reference to them.

Towards April 1986, Tomas Harden said he was going to leave the area where he lived, which meant the communications would come to an end. Shortly after this, 2109 also said they would be ceasing contact – presumably their experiments with time were completed. Ken and Debbie were left exhausted after nearly two years of poltergeist phenomena and strange communications through time. Even though they had grown very attached to Tomas Harden, they were relieved it was all over.

Linguistic comparison

So what was going on? The SPR investigators insisted it must be a hoax, but never produced a report to this effect. Later the BBC featured the case in one of their “Out of this World” programmes, broadcast in summer 1996. As part of the programme, they had Laura Wright, a language expert from Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, do a linguistic comparison between the words of Tomas Harden and those of Ken Webster; both samples of text were taken from Ken Webster’s book “The Vertical Plane” (1989), which details the case.

The “Out of this World” programme presented Laura’s findings as revealing a distinct similarity between the two writings; the insinuation being that they were written by the same person – namely Ken Webster. But what was edited out of the programme was Laura Wright pointing out that no conclusion could be drawn from her analysis…

In the end, it is clear that something remarkable occurred in Dodleston during the mid-1980s. Apart from anything else, there were numerous witnesses to both the computer communications and to the poltergeist phenomena for the case to be dismissed out of hand as a hoax. But whether communications through time actually occurred, or whether there was some other explanation, remains open to conjecture.

On the recommendation of spooks

As well as receiving communications from the past, Ken Webster also received communications from the future, via a primitive BBC “B” computer. At one point, the communicants from the future suggested Ken get in touch with one Gary Rowe, an experienced freelance paranormal investigator, based in North Wales. In upper-case, and with the usual poor spelling, they told Ken that:

“GARY HAS A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF US THAN YOU DO HIS EXPERIENCES ARE MOST DEFINATELY AN ADVANTAGE TO THIS.”

The communicants even supplied Ken with Gary’s phone number. Rowe didn’t seem surprised that a discarnate entity had advised Ken to ask him to investigate the case. He agreed to monitor the cottage kitchen with various computer linked sensors, and to write a report detailing his findings. But Gary’s interest primarily revolved around an occult-based agenda. Due to this, and despite 2109′s apparent faith in him, his investigation eventually came to nothing.

Burned by time

During his communications with Tomas Harden, Ken Webster made an attempt to describe how we in the modern world get about in motor vehicles. As an experiment, he snipped out a colour advertisement for a Jaguar XJ coupe and left it near the computer, in the hope that Tomas would be able to see it (Tomas had stated that he could often see Ken in his cottage, so this was not as implausible as it sounds). Not long afterwards, on the computer, Harden stated that, “My good friend, I have found your picture of the car but it is a crude thing for without the horse it won’t go far.” When Ken picked up the photograph again it was charred at the edges, and seemed to have suffered general heat damage. It was also very brittle, and almost crumbled in his hands.

Lucid dreaming

Ken Webster’s girlfriend, Debbie, was also involved in communications with Tomas Harden. But unlike Ken, she apparently actually entered Tomas Harden’s world via lucid dreaming, which involves being consciously aware during dreams, and is very much on a par with out-of-body experiences.

During one such dream, Debbie found herself in Tomas’s kitchen. He was at the table, busy carving at a small wooden object which, on her appearance, he concealed in his hand.

“Pray, maid, how fare you this day?” he enquired.

“Me fares fine,” replied Debbie.

She noticed that Tomas seemed unusually morose. When she asked whether she had offended him in some way, he opened his clenched hand to reveal the object he had been carving.

“Twell n’worke.” he said, sadly.

The object was a carefully carved replica of a fountain pen they had often left for his use when he wished to communicate with them on paper, rather than via the computer.

Ken Webster Interview

During the mid-1980s, while living in a cottage at Dodleston, Cheshire, Ken Webster (44), received via a primitive computer a series of communications purporting to be from the 16th century. I asked Ken whether, given hindsight, he has any final opinions on what occurred at Dodleston?

It is quite natural to ask the person at the heart of an experience what went on but they are not the best qualified. If I was in an earthquake or car crash all I could say was what happened to me and how I felt. I hope I did that in the book but my reading around the subject since then suggests there was a poltergeist element – really very common, even unremarkable compared to other cases – but that there was also, mixed in, a rare example of coherent communication. There was plenty of the sort of garbage writing associated with some poltergeist events – odd words or phrases on the wall or floor. That the communication was often but, many people forget, by no means always, via an incredibly primitive computer has remained a serious puzzle and a block to serious discussion. Y’know it ends up media wise as a computer ghost – oh ha ha very good. The ‘ghost’ idea also brings problems…

You reject the idea that Tomas, the communicant from the past, was a ghost – why is that?

Most people are pretty OK about understanding ghosts as spirits of the dead, and there are plenty of good reports of apparitions. But there have been many studies of them over the last 120 years and it is far more complex than the popular myth would have us believe. Some apparitions have been of the living, for example, and only a smallish sub set seem to be place related, most relate to people who are known to the viewer and this place related group are absolutely the dumbest bunch you ever could imagine – these apparitions seem overwhelmingly unaware, they just go on doing whatever it was they were doing, mostly just walking, standing or sitting. It adds up to bad news for a spiritualistic interpretation. In any event the popularity, or for some people, desperation to have signs of an afterlife has got in the way of serious discussion – yes, apparitions, poltergeists happen [not the same thing, which many people don't recognise!] so let’s not just bolt on the thoughtless pre-judgement, lets consider the reports and their contexts widely and as dispassionately as possible. something interesting might result.

Did the events you and your girlfriend, Debbie, experienced at Dodleston change either of you in any way?

It gave us a sense of confidence and pleasure – in a way we were lucky to have had such an experience, no one can take that away, and it revealed that the world, for us at least, is far from explicable and that there are anomalies and these should be intelligently and open mindedly approached. Oh and some of the people we have met subsequently have become friends and we recognise the value in that.

In an ideal world, how would you like to see your case investigated?

Ask the investigators if they ‘see’ the universe as an open, dynamic, profoundly interdependent system in which human kind participates rather than observes and in which the current laws of nature are just convenient and useful abstractions. These people will investigate in a context driven way – though explaining why might take a book in itself. Reading Dean Radin’s, ‘Conscious Universe’, would help if anyone’s interested!

I Survived Today’s Staten Island Ferry Crash

I know that we should not believe in bad luck omens. It’s stupid to do ... Read more.]]> My writer friend Mike Cane posted this incredible true story on his blog today. It relates how he had three omens that something bad would happen to him as he set out for New York City this morning…

I Survived Today’s Staten Island Ferry Crash

I know that we should not believe in bad luck omens. It’s stupid to do so. But I’ve had too many weird things happen in my life to entirely discount them. Take that as you will, but keep reading.

So this morning I had to go into the city early from Staten Island.

I walked to the ferry terminal. And here is where the bad luck omens come in.

I happen to go to cross a street and look down and there’s a dime on the asphalt. This has happened to me about ten times over the past three years, suddenly coming across a dime like that. And the rest of the day usually has bad luck in it. I wasn’t going to pick up the dime, but I did. Because it turns out the bad luck doesn’t go away by not taking the dime. This is like some bizarre quantum effect — just seeing the dime invokes the bad luck. Or at least is a warning of it coming.

So I keep walking. At some point again, totally unplanned, I look down at the sidewalk, and there’s a dead bird. Just like the dime, this has happened several times to me the past few years. See dead bird, get bad luck.

Oh crap.

I keep walking. And again, at one point, I look down, and there’s another dime! Three bad luck omens in a row! And, yes, I took the dime. At the very least, I figure if I’m hit up for change by one of the homeless at the terminal, I can give them the two dimes.

I get on the 6:30 ferry. Nothing happens to me during the trip. In fact, I catch a light nap. I’m not thinking at all about the bad luck because I figure I already know how that will manifest itself (and that part is none of your business). And everything is OK while I’m in the city.

Then I get a text to come back to Staten Island early. I could have gotten on the 9AM ferry, but I didn’t want to rush. The 9:30AM ferry would be fine.

And that’s what I get. The Barberi. Today known as The Ferry of Doom.

I try to nap on the ferry, but I can’t, I’m restless. I don’t think anything of this. I should have paid more attention!

The standard canned announcement comes over the loudspeaker that we’re approaching the dock. I open my eyes a few seconds later and notice that we’ve gotten to the Staten Island side very quickly. Usually that announcement happens too damned early. There’s still ten minutes or so until we dock. This time, we’re eerily closer.

I stand up and stretch and then I notice the wooden dock whizzing by me very fast.

And then one of the executive ferry staff — one of the staff who I believe is supposed to be driving the damned ferry, because he’s wearing a pressed white shirt — walks with speed through my area yelling “Brake! Brake! Brake!!”

I think I might have yelled to the people around me, “We’re too fast! We’re going to crash! Brace yourselves!!”

And as soon as that gets out of my mouth, two things hit my mind:

1) I’m on the left side of the ferry, in the front fifth. People died on the left side of a ferry several years ago during a crash.

2) Am I going to die on this ferry?

I don’t have time to sort out what to do, so I just try to brace myself against a seat that runs parallel to the front.

Just as that happens — BOOM!

Impact!

We have zero slowing down. We had zero engines kicking into reverse. We went straight into the damned thing!

As soon as I saw I wasn’t going to die and wasn’t injured (I have a slightly sore neck, big deal!), I go to the front to see if other people are OK.

Shockingly, a couple who had been on the upper deck — the deck itself! — were uninjured. The guy’s pants showed he was probably knocked to the ground, but he’s otherwise OK.

There are several men who are sitting on the steps leading to the upper deck. They look shaken and later claim to be injured. But I saw no bruises or blood.

The worst one is this older Chinese lady. She was either at the top of or on the sloping ramp leading to the lower deck. She is flat down, diagonally, her feet higher than her head. But there is no blood. She says she has a head or a neck injury and can’t get up.

I look out the doors to the lower deck and it’s a full-out disaster. The big ground-level platform has been thrust inward and the connecting area at the rear of it has been driven skyward. Apparently, that’s where the ramp motors are and there’s smoke emanating from them. Not a big cloud or anything, but you can see a pall and smell it.

I then go back to my level and raise up a window to look out the side. The ferry is driven right into the concrete of the terminal!

They have totally destroyed a second dock of the terminal!

Now here is what really really pisses me off and calls for a deep investigation and justifies any lawsuits that are going to happen.

The ferry staff had time to warn us of a crash.

If I could see we were coming in fast after the canned announcement, they damned well could too. They might have had only twenty seconds leeway, but they could have at least told people, “We’re going to crash. Everyone lie down flat on the floor!”

We had none of that. We had zero warning. I’m not even sure the ferry officer in the white shirt was addressing us when he was yelling “Brake! Brake! Brake!” Everything happened so fast, I couldn’t tell if he was talking to us or yelling into a radio (which they are all supposed to have on their person).

Emergency firemen and cops arrived and maybe after fifteen minutes, they’d set up a metal ramp to get us onto the lower-level exit platform, which was now three-to-four feet above where it was meant to be, and a wooden ramp to get us onto ground-level. I saw one guy with a windbreaker that had “NYPD Detective” on it, talking to a passenger who’d gotten off the ferry. I don’t know if they wanted witness accounts or not. I stood watching for a few seconds and since no one said we should stick around to give a statement, and I saw other people just walking away, I left.

There were plenty of people on the ferry with cameras and cellphone cameras. I wasn’t one of them. But you’re bound to see pictures and read accounts that jibe with my own story here.

As for me, I hope the two dimes and one dead bird are all the damned bad luck I’m going to have for today!

News stories

• Mike Cane interviewed via phone on MSNBC TV
• Staten Island ferry crash in pictures (Chicago Tribune)
• Story covered in the Wall Street Journal

They claimed that a whole battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment vanished before their eyes in Suvla Bay, Turkey, on 21 August 1915.

According ... Read more.]]> A bizarre vanishing allegedly took place in World War 1 during the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign. The incident was reported by three old soldiers from a New Zealand field company who came forward fifty years later.

They claimed that a whole battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment vanished before their eyes in Suvla Bay, Turkey, on 21 August 1915.

According to their account, the British regiment marched into a “strange loaf-of-bread shaped cloud” that was hovering over a dry creek bed. After the last man had entered, the cloud lifted and moved off against the wind. Not one of the soldiers was ever seen again.

The New Zealanders also claimed that, on the surrender of Turkey in 1918, the British authorities demanded that the missing battalion be returned. The Turks apparently denied capturing or even coming across the troops in question.

She ... Read more.]]> People apparently vanishing into thin air is more common than you might think. On April 13, 1969, for example, April Fabb (13) set out on a two-mile bike ride from her home in the village of Melton, in Norfolk, England, to her sister’s home in Roughton to give her brother-in-law a pack of cigarettes as a birthday present.

She was last seen on a country lane at 2:06 pm. Her blue and white bike was found lying on its side in a field at 2:12 pm. She hasn’t been seen since and apparently disappeared into thin air.

Earth energies author Ellis Taylor believes it is significant that April disappeared close to a ley line, one that runs all the way from the New Forest to the North Norfolk coast.

Chillingly, he points out that the bodies of Holly Wells’ and Jessica Chapman, the two ten-year-old girls viciously murdered in 2002, were found in woods near RAF Lakenheath, which is also on the ley line. Taylor also cites a number of other murders that were either committed on the line or bodies were found close to it.

Could April Fabb’s disappearance, and the terrible murders, be down to a ley line gone bad – one that is emitting evil energy?